March Madness 2024 Bubble Watch: First Four In, Last Four Out, more on Feb. 6
March Madness Bubble Watch: First Four Out
Team | Conference | Record | NET | Last Game | Next Game |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Colorado | Pac-12 | 15-7 (6-5) | 29 | L 73-68 At Utah | Vs. Arizona State 2/8 |
St. John's | Big East | 13-9 (5-6) | 43 | L 77-64 Vs. No. 1 UCONN | Vs. DePaul 2/6 |
Memphis | American | 16-6 (5-4) | 81 | W 65-63 Vs. Wichita State | At Temple 2/8 |
Wake Forest | ACC | 14-7 (6-4) | 42 | W 99-70 Vs. Syracuse | At Georgia Tech 2/6 |
The Buffaloes are the first team out of the field despite some solid metrics as the result of some rough losses both in the non-conference (Florida State) and Pac-12 (At Arizona State and Cal). The Arizona schools come to Boulder this week and a sweep would be massive for Colorado, which would avenge the Arizona State loss while adding a Quad 1 victory to their ledger.
Rick Pitino's first year back in the Big East has gone south as St. John's has slid out of the field with five losses in their past six games. There isn't a lot of margin for error when you add in bad non-conference losses to Michigan and Boston College, meaning the Red Storm need to get a few marquee wins to make their solid NET rating meaningful.
There is a major injury asterisk attached to Memphis, which lost four straight games after losing star guard Caleb Mills to the season for knee surgery. The committee will weigh injury concerns into their evaluation but Memphis needs to get more wins to show they can be competitive without Mills and a two-pointer over Wichita State is a good place to start.
Wake Forest is another victim of the mediocre ACC except they have no quality wins to speak of. An 0-3 record in Quad 1 and 5-4 record in Quad 2 isn't good enough right now so the Demon Deacons have work to do to prove they belong in the field on Selection Sunday.